Wolstonbury Hill Sunday 25th Nov

Hi All,
Today Paul and I decided to venture to Wolstonbury to see whether we could find some lift in the ENE - NE wind forecast.
We arrived at 10:00 and had messages from Nick G and John M that they would be there too. Luckily I had brought the club Spectre for just such an eventuality.
When Nick and John arrived we set off up the hill and Paul tried to fly from before the gate in the bowl there, but decided that beyond the gate would be better.
We set up just beyond the gate in a field of young bulls (bullocks I think), but they didn't bother us and we were soon joined by Robin A.
Paul brought his Highside and Ninja, I had my Ninja and Phase 6, Robin had his Lidl glider and home made wing, John M brought a 60" Wildthing and Nick had the club Spectre (he has a Wildthing waiting to be built).
We all started with the foamies except Paul who flew the Highside which was lovely to watch as it's so graceful. The foamies were all over the place weaving in and out of close proximity to each other - Paul joined in with his Ninja and we then had 4 foamies all in the same airspace at once - but no accidents. Robin flew the homemade wing with all these others and it was pretty busy as there was only a narrow area of lift today.
John and Nick were practicing their landings and doing very well and Rob set up the Phase 6 and Paul then flew it for a while - here's some video of Paul flying which I took.....

I then flew it for quite a long time but asked Paul to land it for me (chicken).

Our mate and fellow club member Bernie J turned up with his dog Harvey and stopped for a short chat. It was good to see Bernie again.

Everyone had a lot of flying and nothing got broken , so that's a result really !!

Weather was a bit cool and threatening at times, but as Paul said " It's winter !"

Rob

Elegant Simplicity

Back in 2016, in the quest for a simple lightweight and compact model, I built a West Wings Aurora. With a little ballast it flew very nicely and with my split-wing conversion it was very compact, the only drawback was its fragility; anything less than a perfect landing risked a session-ending fracture.
However, the Aurora proved the success of the overall concept, so this year I found a kit with a very similar specification but from a manufacturer with an established reputation for designing more rugged models. So after several months in the workshop I have some bare bones pictures of the Phoenix Model Products 'Snowy'.

1600mm span, approximately 870gms flying weight.

The wing design is in two halves with a steel rod and brass tubes included in the kit.

The structure is very traditional (and easily reparable) balsa, spruce and ply, although for ease of construction Stan Yeo (the designer) has stopped short of a full 'D' box leading edge, relying instead upon 10mm cap strips to maintain torsional stiffness.  

On the PMP website Stan describes this as a "slope trainer" and 40 years ago this kind of glider was what everyone learned to fly with. Generous dihedral offers innate stability and once it is aligned into the wind it will happily fly 'hands-off'. Of course the recommended slope trainer of today is made from carbon-fibre-reinforced foam and has the innate ability to bounce in the event of a hard landing. You pays your money and you takes your choice...

Happy landings
Russell H